Write Yourself a New Story

It is inevitable, don’t even try to deny it, at this time of year, we all look back and reflect on the past 12 months, and judge ourselves against a bewildering level of social barometers as to whether we’ve done good, or done rubbish. In fact, there are some people who do this every month!

Measuring your achievements or lack thereof, is something that can be quite a useful exercise but how can we avoid the pitfall of becoming bogged down with our failures?

If we ignore them and just concentrate on what has worked well, they don’t go away, they just fester beneath the surface, only to be resurrected when we next embark on the reflection game.

If we only concentrate on our failures, it can produce a destructive ‘beat yourself up’ session which is never good. Like many things I think it is good to highlight and bask in the glories and resolve to tackle the not so successful.

I would suggest that by first assessing whether that goal, achievement is even still relevant to your life, you can manage your disappointment in a really constructive way.

How do you know if it is still relevant? Well ask yourself, when I made it a prominent goal, what was happening in my life at the time? Was it a goal I set that was relevant to what was going on at the time, and it that situation still going on?

For example, if you set yourself of a goal of learning a new language, did you make that a priority because you were about to move to a new country?, were you on holiday and having problems communicating with the local taxi driver?

If you’re no longer moving to that new country, or if you’re now so broke that you won’t be holidaying outside of the country for the next five years, I would submit that the goal is no longer really a priority so toss it!

Goal setting can be such an arduous burden, why do people do it? There are some people who think that incessant goal orientated living is not the best way for humans to live their lives. Better to treat life as a journey, tackling things that cross your path as and when they do. Watching out for opportunities but knowing when to say no and carry on to your next port of call.

There are others who maintain that goals help us to achieve things in life and that if we didn’t have them, then we would simply meander our way through life not really achieving anything great.

I think both these camps have got a point, but also believe that it’s up to the individual to decide on which way of living best works for them, after all it takes all sorts to make up the world and if we all followed the same formula for living then variety would never exist.

As I am writing this, I am struck by the meandering that is occurring right now. This post was supposed to be about writing yourself a new story, which is a phrase that has been stuck in my mind since I heard it on Ugly Betty about 2 weeks ago and I thought it would be a good title for a blog post.

If I ever get around to actually making content and title of this post more coherently linked, I will edit it, but for now, think that’s all I got.